


Senatus consultum ultimum

by sevenofspade



Series: Latium [1]
Category: Ancient History RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Science Fiction, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-16
Updated: 2015-07-16
Packaged: 2018-04-09 17:20:21
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,029
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4357760
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sevenofspade/pseuds/sevenofspade
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Roman mob kills Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus. His brother investigates.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Senatus consultum ultimum

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Alasse_Irena](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Alasse_Irena/gifts).



> Your letter said "how about a weird futuristic Roman Republic AU? Have you considered Gaius and Tiberius as a crime-fighting duo?" and this has a bit of both. I hope you enjoy reading this as much as I did writing it.
> 
> Various untagged figures from Roman history appear throughout. The confusion of time periods is deliberate.

Gaius learned about his brother's murder from a public service announcement.

He'd been riding the airtrain home from work when it had stopped at the corner of 9th, 127th and 23rd. Cursing silently under his breath, Gaius waited for the announcement of how long this was going to take.

"Tribune Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus has been shot dead on the Senate floor. Traffic is interrupted between 1rst and 10th, 120th to 130th and 15th to 25th. Thank you for your patience."

Gaius reached out to keep from stumbling into the window. The girl he displaced frowned, then asked, "Dude, are you okay?"

"That's my brother," Gaius said. He thought she might be talking -- her mouth was moving -- but all sound was fading. In a daze, he made his way to the emergency exit, inputted his authorisation code and waited for the door to open.

Officer Cloelia was the one driving the car that flew up from 10th to pick him up. He jumped into the backseat before she was in legal range.

"I need to speak to my mother," Gaius told Cloelia and gave her the address. 

Cloelia drove in silence. Through the window, Gaius watched the world go by in a grey haze. At 59th and 72nd, Cloelia dove the car down to reach the lower levels. When they reached the ground level, she suppressed a shudder and deployed the wheels so they could use the roads and gave in five minutes in, when it turned out the fabled road repair budget had either not been allocated yet or spent on other things -- or both. Tiberius had been working on that for months now. 

Through the window, after he'd wiped the grime away, Gaius started seeing sights from his childhood.

The store where Tiberius had bought his first political toga and Gaius, all of nine years old at the time had urged him to be a ghost until he'd done it.

In Vino Veritas, where Gaius had been banned from returning after the mess he'd made getting drunk on his fifteenth birthday.

The Lesbia bookstore, ran by Sappho and Catullus -- who'd shown up one day to be her apprentice and had never left.

The bike shop, where Tiberius had bought Gaius what had been the very best present ever in his twelve years of life – a bike that had been too big for him but Gaius had insisted on riding anyway, arguing he'd grow into it. He had.

Barca and sons, electricians. One of the titular sons, as an old man, had eloped with Gaius' grandfather.

Though he'd argued for her to drop him off at the corner -- no sense in a police car staying this low in the city any longer than necessary -- Cloelia insisted to drop him off right in front of the door -- "have you _seen_ where you live?". Gaius waved her away and she jerked her chin towards the door, clearly intending to watch until he was inside, as though more disaster would befell him in the instant between turning the key in the lock and crossing the threshold. At least she didn't insist on following him until he reached the flat.

The words "Mother? I'm home" died on his lips. There were voices coming from inside the house. He grabbed his badge in one hand, ready if need be to switch his grip on it and activate the laser blade.

Gaius stepped further into the corridor, closing the door silently behind him to find himself in darkness.

"I assure you I had nothing to do with this," a man's voice said.

"I know," Gaius' mother replied. She opened her mouth to say more, and the words that came out were, "Gaius. What are you doing home?"

"Mother." Gaius' badge fell to the floor and tears followed it down. "Mother. Mother. Tiberius --"

Cornelia rose and with all the speed of her fifty-seven years, ran for him. She folded her arms around him. He was sobbing in earnest now.

The man got up and started leaving. Despite the tears, Gaius noticed two things about him -- that he was old enough to be his mother's father and that he was half-blind, one of his eyes not the electric green of the newest prosthetics, but the grey-ish white of scar tissue. He had a face that looked familiar, as though Gaius had seen it a thousand times or remembered it from long ago -- perhaps they'd shared a commute, once.

The man was long gone by the time Gaius stopped crying.

"Hush now," his mother said. "Do you want a glass of milk?"

Gaius shook his head. "Just -- just water. Who was that?"

"A neighbour," she said. "Nothing for you to worry about."

Gaius nodded. If Mother said it was nothing to worry about, it was nothing to worry about.

"Have you -- have you --" The words struggled and fought each other to get out of his throat and so nothing more came out. Have you heard? Have you _seen_?

"Yes," she said. She kissed the top of Gaius' head. "I know about Tiberius' murder."

Gaius wanted to ask her to fix it, like she'd fixed everything that had ever gone wrong when he'd been a child, but he didn't. He was no longer a child and there was nothing she could do. 

"He will be avenged," she said. There was a deadly certainty to her voice. Maybe she could do something, after all.

"Yes," Gaius said. "I'll make sure of it. He was my brother."

"He was my son," Cornelia said and was rage enough in her voice to tear the city apart. He had never been scared of her, but in that moment, if she had not been his mother, he might have been.

He did not go home that night and slept in his brother's old room.

He had a dream, during the night, that he woke up -- as he often did -- and went to the kitchen to get himself a glass of water. Tiberius told him there was orange juice in the fridge and Gaius poured himself a glass. They sat in silence in the kitchen in the middle of the night, the way they so often had during their lives -- the way they never would again. The orange juice tasted like loss and grief. Gaius went back to bed.

He woke up with the taste of a half-remembered dream on his lips and the realisation that he was going to be late for work. He'd woken at his usual time, but of course he was not home. He rushed out the door, barely stopping to kiss her mother on her cheek and take a drink of water from the dirty glass still on the counter.

"Hey," Fulvia said. "You feeling okay? I thought you'd be drinking your grief away down at Calypso's."

"Calypso's a mob bar," Gaius said. He couldn't fault Fulvia for not knowing, though. He'd only just found out himself before leaving work yesterday. "Pays its money to the Styx Brigade."

"Damn. Is there anything or anyone in this city that isn't corrupt?" 

"Nope. You and I are the only honest folks left in all of Latium," Gaius said and felt a fresh stab of grief. He'd meant it as a joke, but with Tiberius dead he wasn't that far from the truth.

"Gracchus. Flacca. My office, now," Agrippa said.

Fulvia and Gaius exchanged a look, but went to the boss' office.

"Close the door," Agrippa said. Once the door was closed, he began to deflate. "Gaius, I'm sorry for your loss. Do you need time off? I know you and your brother were close."

"Thank you, sir, but that won't be necessary," Gaius said. He need something to get his mind off the fact that his brother had died, that there was a corpse with his best friend's face being dissected deep in the forensics labs.

"Good." Agrippa sighed. "Starting early this morning, there's been a series of incidents that could lead to a gang war. You two need to stop it."

Fulvia waited for Gaius to nod before she did so herself. 

Agrippa looked at them. "Please don't let your temper get the better of you again. That goes for both of you hotheads."

Fulvia was rolling her eyes and grumbling as soon as they were out of the boss' office. She was likely to do so for the entire five stories climb to her office -- "what'd he go and say that for" -- "you nail _one_ creep's hands to a door, you never hear the end of it" --, but Gaius stopped her.

"Were you waiting for me downstairs?" He asked. 

She shrugged. "Don't get used to it."

"I won't. But. Thank you."

"What are friends for, heh?" She shrugged again. "There's your office."

Gaius got into his office and dropped in his chair. He gave himself thirty seconds to get his grief under control then went to work. 

He opened his hand and a 3D map of the city erupted around him. When Gaius gave it the authorisation code Agrippa had forwarded him, the patches of gang warfare highlighted themselves. There was one five streets along and another three avenues over and two levels up from where his mother lived. Maybe Cloelia had had a point, Gaius reflected. 

He set the patches to be displayed in chronological order. Given Agrippa's comments on the violence having started after Tiberius' murder, Gaius had expected to kind of pattern linking the two: a cluster around the Senate or the violence having started there and spread out, but neither of these held true. It couldn't even be that the mob had tried to kill Tiberius for some reason; why would they care about land reforms? 

Gaius shifted the colour display to the common code of inter-gang interaction, to see if any patterns emerged there.

"There's no fighting between the Roman and Carthaginian mobs," Tiberius said.

"There rarely is," Gaius replied. He twisted the map in the air to look closer at it from another viewpoint -- the Teutoburg death trap was still the Teutoburg death trap. Slowly, it dawned on him that someone had spoken and he reached for his badge. Then, it dawned on him who had spoken. "Tiberius?"

"Yes."

"You're dead."

"The hail of bullets was rather a big clue."

"Prove it's you," Gaius said, his hand shaking against the badge on his hip and still not looking at where the voice had come from.

There was a pause from behind him and Gaius thought for a moment that he'd imagined the last five minutes -- hallucinations driven by grief, perhaps. 

Then the voice spoke again, "Before Grandpa Scipio eloped to become Africanus, he got you an elephant stuffed toy. Last I knew you still had it."

Gaius stayed frozen. That was true, but the elephant was on a shelf above his bed; one needed simply to have been in his room to know he still had it and he'd told the story of his grandfather's elopement more than once -- it was a rare thing for old men to wait so long to run away with the loves of their lives. He'd kept the toy because his grandfather had died soon after, one of many to do so in the Zama train wreck.

"We shared a drink last night," Tiberius said. And now Gaius knew it really was Tiberius. He'd told no one about the dream.

"Okay," Gaius said. "Now, prove you're real."

There was a silence, during which Gaius turned around. Tiberius was standing in front of him, no more substantial than the city map hanging in mid-air around him, the Senate landing neatly in the middle of the bloody hole in his toga. There was another, higher up in his chest, just in front of where the Capitol was, and blood dripping down his arm along the bank of the river that shared his name. Gaius made a shooing motion and the city disappeared. That left Tiberius standing alone, still see-through, still silent. Gaius touched the base of his annular, then the tip. Five seconds later, the door opened through Tiberius and Fulvia's panicked face came through behind it.

When she saw Gaius, her panic turned to anger, which quickly evaporated. "Dude, are you okay? You look like you've seen a ghost."

"My bad, Fulvia. I hadn't realised I was signalling." Gaius held up his hands.

Fulvia frowned. "Maybe you should get Agnodice to set the combination to something longer."

"Yeah. Maybe."

"Take care." Fulvia started leaving then turned back around. "Did your brother have ties to the mob?"

Gaius raised an eyebrow at her and even Tiberius' maybe-ghost turned around to do the same, even though half her arm was still through his chest.

Fulvia rolled her eyes. "Chill. I'm not going to go running to the press. It's just that I'm pretty sure the snipers who got him were just killed in a shoot-out near the Quirinal bar."

"Hardly surprising that mob snipers would be killed in mob war time," Gaius said.

Fulvia swiped her hand over her other palm and said, "I just sent you Cloelia's preliminary file. Look at it and tell me if you see what I see."

Gaius nodded and Fulvia mock-saluted as she walked out.

There was a silence, then Tiberius said, "Can I see that?"

"Not until you prove you're real," Gaius said.

"And how do you suppose I do that?" He leaned against the wall and if he thought Gaius hadn't noticed that he'd first started falling through it before catching himself, then he was not-so-sadly mistaken.

"You're the smart one, figure something out."

"You are smart," Tiberius said. "Smart enough to make it into politics." It was a subject they'd talked about many, many times.

"It would get very confusing to have to Gracchi in politics at once," Gaius said, like always.

Tiberius' answer was not the one he always gave -- 'they can learn to deal' --, but "Not going to be a problem now, is it?"

Gaius felt like he'd been stabbed in the heart with grief all over again.

"Too soon?" Tiberius asked. It was close enough to the kind of dark humour his brother enjoyed that Gaius could believe Tiberius to say it, but he had never thought his brother would joke about his own death. He decided right then and there that it was his brother, come back as a ghost. 

Gaius snapped his fingers and the file Fulvia had sent him unfolded in the air in front of both of them. He spun his wrist and the file lifted to leave some space below for the city map to appear, with the new information added in. It was a good thing Gaius hadn't expected said file to provide any enlightening insights into the situation, because he would have been sadly disappointed. It was another datapoint and that was it.

Gaius trusted Fulvia's instincts, though, so if she said there was something odd about this shoot-out, there was. 

Gaius pulled up the autopsy files -- all three of them -- and Tiberius made a retching sound.

"Do you mind?" Gaius asked. "I'm working. Just put your hands over your eyes."

"I'm a ghost. I can see through my hands," Tiberius said.

Gaius looked over at Tiberius and narrowed his eyes. "Are you having me on?"

Tiberius' smile was answer enough.

Gaius rolled his eyes. His brother had always kept a tight lid on his sense of humour in public and it seemed that now that there was no more public for it than Gaius, he was going to have a front row seat to all of it. 

Tiberius traced the black line of burned flesh on the inside of one of the sniper's skull. "I know that," he said. "That's Bucchero. That must mean it was the Etruscans."

"Not necessarily. Not only is the Quirinal really, really deep in Roman territory – so deep that we think it's one of the Imperator's offices --, it's also farther from the rooftops than the Etruscans have been to in years." Gaius sighed. "And ever since the thing with the Tarquins, it'll be as much of a death sentence for the Etruscans to show up in Roman territory as the other way around."

Tiberius pulled back his hand from the holo skull.

"A Bucchero set-up can't be disguised as anything else and those things are nothing but obvious," Gaius continued. "There's no way this wasn't an inside job." 

"Where did they get the Bucchero, then?" Tiberius asked.

"They make it."

"The Romans?"

"No, the Etruscans. We don't know how, but they make it themselves. Oh, you meant the snipers' killers." Gaius re-dismissed the autopsy report and brought up the ballistics report.

Tiberius nodded. "I imagine that's what officers Cloelia and Flacca are investigating now," Tiberius said. "And it would explain why officer Fulvia believes I might have had ties with the Roman mob. It does look like they're avenging my murder."

Gaius gave a nod and called up Fulvia on the display. "You're right," he told her. "It looks more like an execution than a coincidence."

"Yeah, that's why I asked about your brother." She ran a hand through her hair. "You want to tell Agrippa, or shall I?"

Gaius shook his head. "I'll do it, but thanks for the offer. Good luck with the case on your own."

"'On my own'." Fulvia snorted. "Don't get caught."

"I have no idea what you're talking about."

"Nor I." Gaius cut the feed by waving his hand through the holo of Fulvia's face. It was short work to inform Agrippa that he had to remove himself from the investigation due to conflict of interest.

"Do you do that a lot?" Tiberius asked once they were out on the street.

"Do what?" 

"Break the law." 

"That's pretty rich coming from a politician," Gaius replied.

Tiberius was silent, then said, "I'm honest. You know that."

"I do know. Mother raised both of us and look how we turned out."

"We turned out fine."

"You turned out dead."

They spent the rest of the way to the Quirinal in silence. There should have been a police line when they got there. There was not. Gaius sighed. He'd been expecting it, but that didn't mean it wasn't a disappointment. The corruption in the city had been steadily getting worse for years now, ever since the Triumvirate had gone down in a three-way shoot-out at the Ides. 

If you asked Gaius, he wasn't all too fond of the fact that his boss was a childhood friend of the current mayor, but having friends in politics was legal. As was having friends who owned the biggest media corporation in the city. Or friends who... did whatever it was that Drusilla _did_. Rumour was the Roman mob had gone back into the hand of whoever it was that had ruled it before the Triumvirate. There was good reason to believe it -- in particular the Roman/Carthaginian non-agression pact.

The woman behind the counter at the Quirinal frowned at Gaius. "You look familiar."

Gaius shrugged.

"Ask about the bloodstains," Tiberius prompted.

Gaius resisted the urge to glare at him. He knew how to do his job. "What's with the bloodstains?"

"Don't know. Wasn't my shift."

"She's lying," Tiberius said. To Gaius' unvoiced question, he answered, "Her heartbeat just went up."

"Look," Gaius said. "I know you're lying."

She frowned and drew back. "Why the fuck do you want to know?"

Before Gaius could get any further though, a young boy ran into the bar, shouting at the bartender -- her name was Sophonisba -- that the Lictors had attacked Carthalo's house and sixteen other Carthaginian strongholds. He passed right through Tiberius as he rushed to her side. Tiberius turned distinctly green arund the edges.

"That's not possible," the bartender said, suddenly looking very young. "They don't -- they don't fight. I wouldn't be able to work here if they did."

"Kid." Gaius decided it was time he stepped in before she broke down completely. "Kid. Hey, kid. Go to the 33rd precinct and ask for Fulvia. Officer Flacca. Tell her Gaius sent you." 

The kids left, their hands intertwined with fingers clasped together. The boy had a jacket from the Numidian Cavalry. 

Gaius jumped behind the counter and started rummaging around. "Tiberius, help me out here. Do they have any Harustech?"

"How should I know?" Tiberius asked.

"I don't know," Gaius said. "Do a ghost thing!"

Tiberius sighed. He started glowing and passed his hand the bar. Then he turned to the door at the end of the room. One moment he was next to Gaius, the other he was next to the door. As he passed through it, Gaius rushed to get next to it.

"Well," Tiberius started then passed his head through the door to look at Gaius while he continued, "there's good news and there's bad news. Good news, they do have some Harustech. Bad news, this door is three different doors, each which over a dozen security measures. Further bad news, the Harustech has an incoming."

"Right. Can you give me the number? If the set-up is old enough, I might be able to get the system to believe we're the legit recipient," Gaius said. He dug in his pocket for the Fulgurales he'd used to get in touch with Spurinna -- his contact on the Ides case. 

Tiberius laughed. "I don't doubt it, Gaius, but it won't be necessary. This isn't a Fulgurales or a Tonitruales, this is an Augury."

"I didn't know anyone except Mother used those anymore," Gaius said. "What does it say?"

"That they're meeting at 57th, 29th and 3rd in an hour," Tiberius said. "It's addressed from the Suffet to the Imperator."

Gaius nodded. "Let's go."

It wasn't all that heroic to go to a meeting of mob bosses on a bike, but he'd loaned his jetbike to Fulvia after hers got stolen by Mark Antony of the Lupercals, he'd never owned a car and public transport didn't go within three levels of where he was going. Gaius biked right down the side of this building, figuring they were likelier to be watching for intruders from above than below. It was a decision he quickly regretted as soon as he came off the transport grid; since transport had taken to the skies, no one had conducted any maintenance on the groundroads. He had mud up to his knees and had to get off the bike to push it along.

"You could tie it up somewhere," Tiberius suggested.

Gaius shook his head. "It'll get stolen."

"So? It's an antique and was an antique when I got it fifth-hand."

Gaius nodded. He didn't want to tell Tiberius that holding on to what he had left of him was his way of mourning him. It seemed childish, and pointless with his brother's ghost standing -- or floating, rather -- next to him.

The building the meeting was to take place in was built in such a way that there could have been a gunman hidden in the space above the door. They'd found out when Horatius had had to shield the whole team with his body -- a combination of large frame and narrow hallway making this possible. He was still in the hospital. Gaius shoved the bike in the empty, narrow space with extra prejudice.

"I'll check ahead and let you know if there's trouble," Tiberius said. As he moved away, Gaius noticed he wasn't even moving his legs anymore. He wasn't walking, he was gliding, which was scary enough in itself without considering the implications.

Tiberius didn't come back. For a moment, Gaius was scared. He steeled himself and walked to the open elevator shaft; the cabin long destroyed or stolen, its cables lying on the floor at his feet tangled like wolves in a den. There was no mistaking what part of the building the meeting was in; there were light and sound coming from only one room, two floors up.

He backtracked a little down the corridor until he found the service door. As per regulations, it opened soundlessly when he flashed it his badge -- at least one thing in this shithole still worked -- and so he climbed the ladder to the right floor.

Once on the right floor, he followed the voice and the faint trail of Tiberius' inner glow.

"I have to say this is unexpected," someone was saying. "I thought for sure you'd be dead by now. An old man like you, playing at mobsters."

Gaius froze. He knew that voice.

"You know, at first I just wanted to take your place and get rid of him, but then I realised: why not both?"

Tiberius materialised in front of Gaius. "Gaius, that's Aemilianus and --"

Gaius blinked. He had to have heard that second person wrong. But that was Aemilianus and how had he not known his cousin was with the Roman mob? Some detective he was. (So what if he'd seen Aemilianus once in the last ten years. That was no excuse.) 

Inside, Aemilianus continued, "You have to admit it was a good plan. Kill your son, frame the Etruscans, then set off the gang war you two have been averting for years between and the whole city would go up in flames until I'm the only one left to rule it. But no. You had to be fucking reasonable. So now you get to die."

"You were going to kill us anyway," a man answered. Gaius recognised the voice of the man his mother had described as 'a neighbour'.

There was a sound like a slap. Gaius gripped his badge and leapt into the room.

"Police! You're all under arrest!"

Aemilianus laughed. "Oh, this is priceless!"

"Gaius," his mother said, "run!" She managed to tip the chair she was tied to so as to bring Aemilianus down with her.

The old man stayed still in his chair, head bowed to the side, nose dripping blood. He was breathing, if only barely.

Gaius shocked Aemilianus and handcuffed him, before moving to de-handcuff his mother. Tiberius was sitting in the corner as though he were the one who had been shocked into unconsciousness. Gaius carefully righted is mother's chair -- when had she gotten so light -- and check that blood wasn't running down the throat of the old man.

"Mother."

"Gaius."

"Can you please explain what's going on?"

"I'm the Imperator of the Roman mob," Cornelia said. She tossed her head to the old man. "He's the Suffet for the Carthaginian mob."

"That had been quite clear from context," Tiberius said.

When no one reacted and no further explanation from Cornelia was forthcoming, Gaius said, "I figured that already. What the hell? How long have you been Imperator?"

"Twenty-seven years, including the time the Triumvirate tried to take my place," Cornelia said. "Ever since Hannibal --" she tossed her head towards the old man again -- "and my father eloped together."

"Grandfather Scipio used to be Imperator?" Gaius frowned. He hadn't seen the man since Gaius had been ten and Scipio had died, but still. "That doesn't seem like him."

"He did try to fight it," the old man -- Grandfather's husband, Hannibal and how had Gaius never noticed that the descriptions of the Suffet looked like him, he would never know -- said. "That had less than optimal results."

"The Cannae bloodbath," Gaius and Tiberius said at the same time. Gaius could barely hear Tiberius' voice over his own.

"Yes. He once told me he considered that my finest work," Hannibal said.

Gaius blinked. "Please tell me you didn't fall in love because you were both really good at mass murder."

"No. He came to the shop one day. He knew who I was, I didn't."

"On second thoughts," Gaius said, "that's not really the point. I assume you stopped being Suffet when the two of you eloped when..."

"When I was old enough that leaving me in charge wouldn't lead to 'less than optimal results'," Cornelia said.

"I should have been looking to my own house." Hannibal sighed. "Scipio will never let me forget it." 

Gaius made a note that his grandfather was not dead then returned to the matter at hand. "Again, what the hell, mom?"

It was the first time in his life he'd called his mother 'mom'. 

"I told you. I'm the Imperator of the Roman mob."

Gaius waited until she had finished talking and said, "Why don't I know about this? I'm your son!"

"That's exactly why you don't know," Cornelia said. "This life is not an easy life. My father had to fake his death to get out of it. I did what I could to give you and your brother a better life."

"And now Tiberius is dead."

"Yes. I thought to avenge his death before you found out," Cornelia said.

"Found out about you being Imperator, you mean?" She nodded and he continued. "Well, I did find out and you're under arrest." He signalled Fulvia – thumb touching the base of his annular, then the tip -- and activated his badge to make locating him easier and indicating his need for back-up. Aemilianus probably wasn't alone and not having seen his acolytes made Gaius suspect something suspicious was happening.

"Your own mother?" She was smiling faintly as she spoke, the kind of small, true smile he rarely saw on her face -- he knew why, now. 

"She raised me to do the right thing."

"She would be proud." There wasn't much for mob bosses to smile about, but she had always smiled like that when talking of him or Tiberius.

Gaius sat, his back against the opposite wall, and waited for Fulvia to arrive.

Fulvia arrived, Cloelia and the entire precinct in tow. She took one look at the situation and said, "Gaius, your life sucks."

"Yeah. Think I'm going to quit being a cop," Gaius said.

"Why? It's not like you've got much family left to arrest." Fulvia offered him her hand.

He took it. "Very funny."

"I try my best." She pulled him to his feet. 

They exited the building in silence.

"I'm going to get into politics," Gaius said. The wind ruffled his hair like Tiberius saying goodbye.

**Author's Note:**

> The title is Latin for "Final decree of the Senate", the first of which was historically used to kill Tiberius and the second of which was use dto kill Gaius.


End file.
